on
his scarlet cloak and cap of costly lace, and carried him to the
carriage and put him into the arms of the red-haired German woman who
was hereafter to be his nurse and win his love from her.

Then the carriage drove off, but, as long as it was in sight, Hannah
stood just where it had left her, watching it with a feeling of such
utter desolation as she had never felt before.

"Oh, baby, baby! come back to me!" she moaned piteously. "What shall I
do without you?"

"God will comfort you, my daughter. He can be more to you than baby
was," the old father said to her, and she replied:

"I know that. Yes, but just now I cannot pray, and I am so desolate."

The burden was pressing more heavily than ever, and Hannah's face grew
whiter, and her eyes larger, and sadder, and brighter as the days went
by, and there was nothing left of baby but a rattle-box with which he
had played, and the cradle in which he had slept. This last she carried
to her room up stairs and made it the shrine over which her prayers were
said, not twice or thrice, but many times a day, for Hannah had early
learned to take every care, great and small, to God, knowing that peace
would come at last, though it might tarry long.

Geraldine sent her a black silk dress, and a white Paisley shawl in
token of her gratitude for all she had done for the baby. She also wrote
her a letter telling of the grand christening they had had, and of the
handsome robe from Paris which baby had worn at the ceremony.

"We have called him Grey," Geraldine wrote, "and perhaps, he will visit
you again next summer," but it was not until Grey was two years old,
that he went once more to the farm-house and staid for several months,
while his parents were in Europe.

What a summer that was for Hannah, and how swiftly the days went by,
while the burden pressed so lightly that sometimes she forgot it for
hours at a time, and only remembered it when she saw how persistently
her father shrank from the advances of the little boy, who, utterly
ignoring his apparent indifference, pursued him constantly, plying him
with questions, and sometimes regarding him curiously, as if wondering
at his silence.

One day, when the old man was sitting in his arm-chair under the apple
trees in the yard, Grey came up to him, with his straw hat hanging down
his back, his blue eyes shining like stars, and all over his face that
sweet smile which made him so beautiful. Folding his little white hands